


I, Agathe

by chewysugar



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Agatha's POV, Fluff, Gen, Magic, POV First Person, Paganism, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: Even Enchantresses make mistakes. Hers was made in a moment of pride, and she suffered for it. But even a spiteful sorceress can find it in her to change and learn that she was wrong.





	

To one who has lived as long as I, change is often a fickle thing, no more impactful than a memory of days in the sun. Certainly I have adapted to many different locales in the centuries I have lived. For my homes in the Green Isles of Britain were wild places, all rolling hills and toadstool circles wherein I dallied with the Fair Folk and sang songs to my Goddess. And so, perhaps the greatest surprise I had to endure was a painful lesson wrought of my own hubris. A lesson that claimed the livelihoods of so many innocent people.  
  
Ah, but I was an arrogant creature in those days. Far more so than I had ever realized. I do not know what it was that brought me to a hidden part of France, only that I had been traveling long and without aim. I had heard it from the people of the surrounding country of the extravagance of their young Prince--of the cruelty wrought upon them by his late father. Would that I could say that a sense of justice was what brought me to that beautiful castle one cold summer evening. But I am no hero, and certainly not of this tale.  
  
Rather it was my own superciliousness, one that I was too blinded to see at the time, that took me wandering down a forest path to the wide open space of the castle lands. I had wrought change in my travels—and this brat, this whelp of a ruler—what was he to me, one who had used the powers of my Mother Goddess to effect great change in the lands?  
  
I remember seeing the red, red roses, bloody and beautiful and in full bloom. I remember hearing the lively music from the extravagant palace. And I remember the cruel rush of vindication that filled my very soul: I was to be the champion of the taxed and crushed people of the country round. Robing myself with the glamor of an old beggar woman, I stole through the opulent labyrinth of the castle grounds, my ire at the royal whelp within growing with each stride. I, who had seen such squander and wealth back in my own home, would be his reckoning. Yet I was not to use my power without reason; I had to test the Prince. Again, out of my own arrogance, for I could excuse my actions if he did as I expected.  
  
Yes, I confess. I walked through the great glass doors of the ballroom hoping he would turn me away, counting on his revulsion at my wizened disguise.  
  
But the Prince did more than turn me away. He rejected my gift of a rose, and laughed openly at my pleas for shelter and succor. Though I had anticipated, even yearned, for his rejection, the mockery stung the part of me most intertwined with my own pride and ego.  
  
Laughter turned to screams; dancing to frantic flight for escape, but it was too late. All in those halls knew my wrath; all who had stood idly by as the Prince had become a twisted man stood by once more to see him change before their very eyes into what I saw him as on the inside: a hideous, vicious Beast.  
  
Oh, how his servants pleaded for his release. They genuflected at my feet, begging me to reconsider, for, they said, it was their own apathy that had led to their prince's cruel transformation at the hands of his father. Alas, their pleas fell on the ears of one too intoxicated with vindictive vengeance.  
  
"You stood by and let an innocent boy be corrupted?" I laughed in their faces. "You're no better than furniture." And so they became, all those who dwelled within that place and dared to stand by and do nothing.  
  
I could say that I departed with that cruel twist of the curse. But I did not. Drunk on my own power, and smarting from an ego as large as the Beast's, I laid the darkest of curses on the castle. I left the Beast with three gifts: a mirror to show those whom the holder most desired see; a book to take the reader to a place they most desired to be; and the single rose I had offered him in bargain for his benevolence.  
  
These were the cruelest of my caprices. For there were none that the Prince could see in the mirror's surface: none living and none who, in his heartlessness, had ties to him. The book was useless, for the spoiled Prince had never considered any place on the face of the Earth to be good enough to fill the greed in his heart.  
  
And lastly the rose: my own clock of doom, and the most malicious working of all. An out clause, in that if he could learn to love another and earn their love in return before the last petal fell, the curse would be broken. In as much as I had counted on the Prince turning a poor, old beggar woman away, so to did I know that Hell itself would freeze before someone ever learned to love a Beast. And the skies would rain gold before the vanity in the Beast's heart ever gave way to selfless love for another.  
  
I left the castle in cruel delight, the pleas and roars of those left to toil under my workings like music to my ears. Ah, but I was a spiteful thing in those days, but not, as I quickly learned, completely free of fault.  
  
My Goddess, Mother of all that was and all that ever would be; Lady of the seasons and worker of great magicks, awaited me on the edge of the twisted forest that closed the Beast's cursed lands.  
  
One look at her face, beautiful and devastating as a winter gale, killed the fires of pride in me.  
  
"Daughter," she said, in a voice that rose like the whispering wind before a great storm, kindly but lethal in the way only a mother's voice could be, "you have profaned most grievously. You heart is filled with the self-same pride that drove a young prince to turn you away to the night from whence you came.  
"You think yourself jilted by the world of the opulent and the wealthy?" She laughed, and I sank to my knees in a gesture of supplication so like that of the one the Prince had given me before I'd unleashed my curse. "You know nothing of the cruelties and caprices of mortal Men. But you shall now. Learn, dear Daughter, if you think yourself so ill-used by the world. Learn just what it really feels like to be scorned and denied the milk of human kindness."  
  
All the power I had ever attained over my years in service to the Goddess left me in a great rush. It bent the trees around me, shearing one strong oak to nothing but a skeleton of bark blocking the path to the Beast's castle. My strength failed, and I crumpled to the ground. In a pool of water I glimpsed what had become of me: all beauty and majesty had fled, leaving me a diminished woman with heavy lidded eyes, pinched lips and a wild stare. My hair was sere, and the cloth of magic I had been garbed in turned to tattered rags.  
  
I beseeched my Mother, begging as the Prince and his servants had, for release. But she shook her head behind the folds of her great midnight cowl, regret in her starlight eyes. "What's the matter, dear Daughter? Does the cloak of a hag not become you any longer? No, do not ask me again to undo this. For in your own heart you know it is your vanity that has damned you. You will be frozen in time as the Beast in yonder keep, forever seeking the help of your fellow man. Forever denied." She turned from me and disappeared into the night, leaving me wretched and angry and despairing.  
  
I confess that in the earliest days of my despair I did everything in my power to break myself free of my punishment. I found that I could not return to the Beast’s castle to beg forgiveness, for though the tree stood against the path as a landmark, I, and all those who passed by it, became seized with a great sense of confusion and misdirection.

And so, to the village.

My crazed desperation and accumulation of all the various sundries I would have used for potions and rituals drew fearful looks from the simple minded people of the village I took refuge in—the village I had cursed. In a matter of days I found myself outcast, destitute—whispered about and openly mocked.  
  
It was a fitting punishment. For I knew the depths of my despair were alike to those shared by the Beast and his servants as they toiled in the bowels of his crumbling castle. I grew to hate him, but knew, as they days bled into years and memory of the castle and the Prince faded from the lands, that our fates were inexorably intertwined.  
  
As Agathe, the madwoman of Villeneuve, I endured the slings and arrows of mankind. Every taunt and thrown stone, every scrap of mercy denied, enforced upon me the gravity of what I had wrought on the Prince. Hatred melted to resignation, and I attempted to make something of a situation for myself.  
  
But not all in the village were unkind and petty.  
  
A little girl, brought to the poor provincial town by her father as a babe some years after the doing of my curse, oftentimes stopped me in the town square to beg a story.  
  
"And what is it about me that bids you believe I have a story to tell?" I asked her shrewdly on the first morning of our acquaintance.  
  
The girl fixed me with a clever, brown eyed stare. She was all of seven years old, but spoke with the wisdom of one far older. "Don't wisewomen know all sorts of tales?"  
  
"Whoever said I was a wisewoman?"  
  
"My papa says that we're not call you anything other than that. He says to call you what everyone else in town calls you is ignorant."  
  
I laughed. "What is your name, child?"  
  
"Belle."  
  
"Ah, Belle. A fitting name for one whose beauty will surpass that of any other."  
  
Belle grimaced. "I do not wish to be beautiful."  
  
I took the girl's small hand in mine. "Heed my words carefully, child. Beauty is found beyond that which we see. True beauty lies within. Never forget that for even a moment." I spoke forlornly, far more than I had meant to. Something of my bitter reminiscence showed in my eyes and voice, for Belle nodded gravely, her doe eyes wide with wonder.  
  
"You truly are a wisewoman, Agathe. Only a wisewoman would say something like that!"  
  
I sighed. "If you say so. And it happens that I have many tales."  
  
Belle brightened. She reached into the front of her grubby apron. To my astonishment, she produced a single rose, not yet in full bloom. "Here," she said. "It isn't a copper. But papa says to give what you can, and that it isn't polite to expect something for nothing."  
  
With trembling hands I took the offered rose from my young friend. "Where did you happen upon this, Belle?"  
  
"Papa always gets me one from the market when he sells his art." Belle frowned, a strand of her mousey hair falling into her face. "Are you crying, Agathe?"  
  
I clutched the rose to my breast. My throat tightened with emotion, and so I shook my head. When my composure returned, I began to weave a tale for my young listener. And day after day Belle returned with odds and ends, and sometimes food. And day by day I told her tales of magical lands—of folk both fair and foul. Of ancient lands and sunken cities. Years went by and Belle never failed to visit me no matter where I was. I do believe her association with me further isolated her from the simple villagers. But Belle never minded what others thought. And she did indeed grow from an inquisitive little girl into the most radiantly beautiful thing I'd ever seen in the mortal world. Her beauty came more from the fact that she never seemed to notice it or care. Her dresses were always stained with soil; her stockings rarely matched and torn more often than not.  
  
The other girls in the village shunned her, nearly as much as they did me. And I cherished her friendship like that of a sister I'd never had. But as she grew into a resourceful young woman, I saw something in her eyes—a yearning for the far off lands and the dazzling adventures I told her of; for love like in the tales of Achilles and Patroclus.  
  
"Do you think it's foolish to be in love, Agathe?" Belle was seventeen when she asked me that question. It was a crisp fall day; we were sitting under the shelter of the felled tree that had become my wilderness home when I wasn't begging for scraps.  
  
I paused in the telling of Tristan and Isolde. Belle looked truly perplexed, something I'd seen cross her face whenever she was engrossed by a particularly mysterious tale.  
  
"Love in its purest form is not foolish, Belle."  
  
"But what is the purest form of love?"  
  
I thought of the cruel curse I'd laid upon the Prince. Of the impossible way out that I'd given him. "Pure love is perseverance. It is to see what is beyond the surface; to put oneself before the beloved."  
  
"So it's something I'll never know," Belle sighed wistfully.  
  
I stared at her, dumbfounded. Belle had swooned many times at the tales of passionate love I'd weaved for her, but I'd never much thought of her as a romantic.  
  
"Do you think often of love, Belle?"  
  
She frowned, as if the idea were shameful. "I think of many things, Agathe. I think of riding on the back of a camel through the Arabian nights; I think of sailing on ships and running through the forests of England. I think of dancing with the Fair Folk and trying to outrace a headless horseman. I want to see something other than the village; to know different people and hear their tales. I want adventure so badly that I cry sometimes for it. And love...love is part of adventure, isn't it? A part of life." She sighed wistfully. "I think I would like to know it too."  
  
"And so you shall."  
  
But Belle shook her head. "I don't know. All the men in this town think I'm unusual. All except for..." She glared a strip of bark as if it had offended her.  
  
I smiled in spite of myself. "Our dear captain."  
  
"There's nothing dear about that oafish, self-absorbed bear," Belle said, with such sudden passion that a nearby screech owl nipped indignantly at her. "I'm a prize to him. And he would cage me and..." She all but snorted, then once more became forlorn. "Everything I desire seems to be so much better in stories. Adventure and love...life can't compare."  
  
Belle began to drift away after that. I wondered if it were a trick of the Goddess—that my only friend began to seek out the shelter of books brought in by the town clergyman. She still visited me from time to time, still stopped to see me and give me food from her garden. But she had a difficult enough time going unaccosted by the dreaded Captain Gaston.  
  
I drifted again, lonely and despondent. I wondered what had become of the Beast. Surely the petals of the enchanted rose had all fallen. I had doomed him, and in doing so doomed myself. I lamented my mistake, but would not fool myself into thinking that my Goddess would take pity on me. For it was as she had said: I had writ my own fate with my blind pride. And I would rue the curse I had so foolishly laid for all eternity.  
  
But Fate is nothing if a tantalizing mistress; Fate, as one of the hands of my Goddess, has a whim and a way of her own, and only the most powerful of seers can predict her wills and wiles.  
  
There came a time only a short few years after my last conversation with Belle—a time when I'd long given up hope of release from my own curse—when something altogether peculiar happened. As with most great shifting events, it started with something small: Belle's father, Maurice, left for his annual trip to the market. I was begging for alms in the streets of Villeneuve when it happened. And the day afterwards I was also there, twining husks of corn I had found into a doll when Maurice's horse returned alone and all of a fright. To my surprise, Belle immediately left the village in search of her father.  
  
Days passed without word from my old friend. Worry gripped me in its insidious clutches. While the residents of the village thought nothing of the disappearance of father and daughter—all save for the amorous and misguided Gaston—I took to my stronghold of the woods. Anything could have happened to Maurice; anything could have happened to Belle in her search for her father. But never in my fruitless nights of searching did I believe for even a moment that their loss had anything to do with the Beast.  
  
After many days of empty handed searching, I came upon something altogether unexpected: Maurice, unconscious as a stone, tied to the gnarled roots of a great tree. Left to the cold and the wild, it was amazing he had not been eaten by the wolves that held dominion in the forests round.  
  
Maurice had never made any effort of friendship towards me the way his daughter had. In truth, he resented the wanderlust my tales had instilled within Belle, although he was never cruel out rightly the way some of the villagers were. And if there was a fault in his despairing of Belle's thirst for adventure, it was simply that he wished to protect her from a world he believed to be all too unkind. A world filled with spiteful folk like me.  
  
I took the broken shell that Maurice had become to my hovel in the woods. If he recognized the odds and ends that Belle had gifted me over the years, he did not show it. For two nights he lay sick with fever, and though I did not have the magicks I normally would have used for his sickness, I was not altogether unprepared. For Nature, like Fate, is one of the many arms of the Goddess, providing for all who live on Earth the means to sustain themselves. Some, like the Fair Folk and those who know such secrets, myself included, simply know the means in which to utilize the abundances of Nature in supernatural ways. I prepared poultices and tinctures for Maurice that carried him through the worst of a fever that could have claimed his life. And when he awoke, I plied him with a tea of stinging nettles and citrusy tree bark. He stared at me as if he could hardly believe his eyes. I expected his rebuff; after all, I was no better than a village witch in his eyes.  
  
"Thank you...Agathe."  
  
I confess that I was stunned by his humility. He, a man who had many times done his best to avoid me in the public square being so kind and grateful. It was a small wonder Belle had grown into such a compassionate young woman.  
  
Maurice's recovery was slow in the going, but not as slow as it may have been. As his strength returned, his trust in my remedies grew. He spoke to me of Belle, and of Belle's mother, taken by plague years beforehand.  
  
How foolish had I been to think that the slight of a Prince was alike to the sharp thorn of life like Maurice's. He and Belle had lost so much, and stood to lose more every day they remained in Villeneuve. Yet their love ran deep, to the point that it caused immense pain to the daughter of that kind, yet imprudent man.  
  
"Maurice, what happened to Belle? Where did she go?" I chanced to ask him on the fourth day of his time with me.  
  
A haunted look came into the man's eyes. For a long moment Maurice did not look at me or speak. He watched the fine mist of rain that watered the forest, every care in the world adding a line to his face.  
  
"You will think me mad," he finally said, relenting his silence.  
  
"I am already called mad," I told him. "And a great deal many things besides. You are safe from judgement here, Maurice. On that matter I give you my solemn word."  
  
Maurice sighed. "She's been taken. Well, no. Not taken. She let herself go in my place. My poor, brave, beautiful Belle." He dissolved into tears again, and I waited patiently, my imagination conjuring up an assortment of untoward possibilities. But it did not produce even a sliver of the truth.  
  
"Who has her, Maurice? The captain?" If that were the case, I would quite like to have sorted Gaston out myself.  
  
"No." Maurice wiped at his streaming eyes. "Belle is prisoner in a terrible castle. I wouldn't have believed such a place to exist had I not seen it for myself. A crumbling, dark thing filled with enchanted teacups…and the master, the Beast…he has my poor Belle in his dungeon."  
  
I dropped the battered wooden cup I had scrounged in my days of beggary, slopping water over my rags.  
  
"Are you alright, Agathe?" Maurice stared at me with evident concern.  
  
"The Beast has Belle?" Even to myself my own voice was far too stunned for my own liking. "The Beast's castle still stands? He is still alive?"  
  
Maurice frowned. "Yes. Do you know the Beast, Agathe?"  
  
Remembering myself, I shook my head. "Ah, no. Not directly. One of those old tales that I heard on my travels. Where is the Beast's castle, Maurice? Can you show me the way?"  
  
He could, but only up to a point: to the gnarled old tree that the Goddess had set in the path from the forgotten palace. Even in the daylight the way looked foreboding; I heard the howl of wolves from within the trees, and knew that I would be very lucky indeed to pass through and make it out alive on the other side. It was a miracle that Maurice and Belle had reached the cursed castle and lived to tell about it.  
  
Maurice was insistent that we gather the villagers and storm the palace. For though a small number of people traversing the wicked and wild way through the woods stood no chance against the guardians there, a great many would keep the wolves at bay. My counsel against this fell on deaf ears; Maurice believed that with my testimony and the word of Gaston's sycophantic friend, LeFou, that the people of Villeneuve would have no choice but to believe him. Though the safety of Belle's father was at the forefront of my mind, I confess that news of the Beast's new prisoner sent a bolt of hope through me. Such a compassionate, stubborn girl as Belle could work wonders for the Beast's heart—could break the curse, if given enough time.  
  
Oh, but it was a selfish hope to cherish—that the Prince would break his curse and mine, thus returning my power to me. And yet, as Maurice led me, somewhat reluctantly, back to the village on a rainy night, I couldn't help but toy with the notion of how perfect it was for Belle of all people to be in the company of the Beast. She who would challenge him, torment him and inspire him to change. And he, who could offer her the adventure and the worldliness and the love that she'd burned for all her life—who could teach her, as he had me, that while beauty was within, pain was the great poison hidden by a mask of vanity and caprice.  
  
We waited in the tavern, sheltered from the rain as Maurice, dressed and appearing sober for all the town to see, told of Gaston's treachery. He did not breathe word of the Beast or the castle, and to my astonishment, he seemed to be turning the tide of the village; many were in favor of sending a search party out for Belle. I had my own mind made up to follow whatever team of men and women ventured into the woods, determined to see for myself just what it was that was going on in that forgotten, cursed land.  
  
But Fate intervened again, and it did so in the form of the celebrated Captain Gaston. He stepped down the stairs into the tavern that bore his name and the trophies of his accomplishments, only to stop dead at the sight of Maurice. One would have thought that he'd seen a ghost. The relief on the face of his toadie little Le Fou was, I noted, quite genuine.  
  
Poor Maurice. He tried so hard to stand up to the great, mountainous bully of Gaston. I had seen the brute grow from an impish child to a conceited man, his mind addled by battle and bloodshed and his own self-importance. None in the village, in the entire world, could turn the tide in their favor like Gaston—could deceive and manipulate like Gaston. Had I the power, I'd have done to him worse than what I'd done to the Prince; the Prince, after all, had been a product of his reigns. Gaston was, through and through, a monster.  
  
Powerless, I watched as the villagers called for the doctor of a madhouse in Paris. Maurice was taken against his will to the village jail, and held there overnight until a padded wagon arrived to take him away. I wish I could say that I stood up for him; but I knew all to well from the Goddess's punishing curse that the superstitious townsfolk would not listen to the words of a witch and wastrel. I had just determined, standing among the crowd calling for blood, that I would brave the hidden path to the castle alone, wolves and enchantments be damned, when the most extraordinary thing happened.  
  
Belle rode in on the back of her old horse, and she looked as if she'd ridden directly out of one of my fantastical tales. Clad in a dress of sunny gold, she stared down the jeering crowd. My surprise upon seeing her so transformed was nothing compared to the moment she withdrew the enchanted mirror—one of the gifts I'd left for the Beast—from a saddlebag.  
  
Oh Belle. Poor girl, so determined to do right, so sheltered by her father. In attempting to prove a point to the people, she turned their bloodlust from Maurice to the Beast that had held her prisoner. Only there was something in the way she spoke—something in the softening of her eyes as she tried to convince the crowd of the Beast's innocence—that plucked at some long-buried chord in my heart.  
  
"He's gentle and kind, and..."  
  
In that moment I knew what she had done: seen through the ferocious visage of the Beast; through the icy mask of the Prince and into the good that had always burned there—the goodness that I had been too blinded by anger and self-righteous hurt to see. But had he found it in himself to let Belle go free? Or had she simply escaped?  
  
I determined, as the ravenous mob turned against Belle, at the behest of Gaston no less, that it mattered not whether Belle's ingenuity had resulted in her freedom. And as the crowd worked itself into a frenzy—again, encouraged by Gaston—I knew I had to act. I had to save the Beast from yet another fate that he did not deserve.  
  
It was quite simple to disappear into the marching mob. Blinded as they were by their ignorant fear of the Beast, they took no notice of the silent, cowled figure striding amongst them. I do not know how Gaston managed to find the secret path to the castle—I can only imagine that he made use of the enchanted mirror that he’d stole from Belle. Regardless, we marched through the perpetual winter of the hidden hollow. And though the wolves bayed at us, our numbers were far too many for them to approach.  
  
Years had passed in wretched regret since last I'd seen the castle. In the time before, the palace and the grounds surrounding it had been resplendent with greenery and statuary of all kinds, with spires and turrets rising majestically to the sky. Now, it was a barren, frozen hellscape, and the castle a crumbling skeleton of a thing that loomed monstrously at the mob. My breath died in my chest; my steps faltered momentarily as I appreciated this superficial change that I had wrought upon that which had once been so beautiful.  
  
But there was no time for regret. The villagers were ascending on the castle, and the closer I got to the great front doors, the more my resolution grew. I could see the desire for bloodshed in the eyes of Gaston. It was one that I recognized, for in his mind, the Beast had stolen Belle's affection, and nobody denied Gaston a thing.

Just as nobody dared slight a sorceress.  
  
Even as chaos reigned in the front hall—as the cursed servants attacked the intruding villagers—I did not hesitate in my tracks for a moment. I need only find the cursed rose and break my enchantment somehow. Then the villagers would see that there was no Beast—just a prince. The how of the matter had been made up in my mind the instant I had elected to follow the mob. I would not ask or beg the Goddess to undo the curse on the Beast. I would _demand_ it. After all, he had, at the very least, learned to love another, and I was certain that Belle loved him. My Mother Goddess had to see the reason in that.  
  
The corridors and stairs of the castle were long, twisted and crumbling around me. A ferocious storm beat against the masonry, rattling the broken stained glass and screaming through the halls. I did not know where the rose was, or the Beast for that matter, only that I had to find either one, the other, or both. A labyrinth of shadows and stone swallowed me; I could feel the floor shake as bits of the castle fell to ruin, and I knew that I needed to act quickly lest the rose lose its last petal.  
  
I heard a scream, carried to me by the howling wind. Belle. She was here. She had come back. Of course she had come back. She loved the Beast, surely, to risk her own life for him.  
  
And moments later, I heard another sound, one that froze me in my tracks. A gunshot. And shortly thereafter, another, loud and echoing and horrible. I closed my eyes, dread overcoming me as I hastened my steps.  
  
Somehow I managed to find my way from a dark corridor to an immense chamber. The first thing I saw was the rose, suspended in a bell jar. There was one bloody petal still clinging to the stem. I walked carefully towards the dais it stood on, as if terrified my own gentle footfalls would disturb it. And that was when I took sight of the most heart-breaking thing I had ever seen in all my life.  
  
Belle, crouched over the Beast. I could see the gentle rise and fall of the Beast's massive chest. Even in the distance from the shadows I could hear the ragged rumble of his words.  
  
"At least...I got to see you...one last time."  
  
Belle whimpered, clutching the Beast's great paw with her delicate hand. "No. No please don't leave me. Please."  
  
The Beast's breathing slowed, and then stilled in one last moment of awful finality. He was gone, as was his castle, which continued to crumble and fall to ruin.  
  
My throat tightened, and as I looked to the rose in its glass prison, and saw the final trembling petal give way and fall, a guilt like hot knives rent at my very soul. I had done this through my own vanity—had doomed innocent lives and shattered the love of the only person who had ever shown me kindness before it even had the chance to fully bloom.  
  
Belle placed a single kiss on the Beast's forehead. "I love you," she whispered. She sounded so small, so lost.  
  
_No_ , I thought to myself. _Not fair_. It was only the machinations of that monster Gaston that had prevented the curse from breaking. The Beast had learned to love, had grown to be the kind soul my Goddess had always known him to be. And Belle had loved him in return; else she would not have come back to the castle to save him from the mob.  
  
"Goddess," I said, speaking low so that my voice could not be heard by the quietly crying Belle. "Mother. Please. Oh please. Let me have just a small bit of power to undo what I so unjustly wrought. Let me fix this for them all."

To be blessed with a power like mine is to be born anew. And as I felt the scorching heat of it caress my skin, I shook my head, instead lifting my hand to the felled rose petals. Life returned to them as they danced in a gentle cyclone around the floating stem. I did not need this power. Not if it was strong enough to bring the Beast back from death. I heard the rumble of the Beast’s breath, and felt knowledge unlike any I’d ever known fill me as I drained the last of the power the Goddess had attempted to return to me.

I could undo the curse. I could, in fact, shatter it outright, and that was exactly what I did. With a simple wave of my hand, the bell jar broke into a million tiny particles, the last of my returned power going with it. Belle gasped, and looking round, I saw the prone form of the Beast rise into the air, golden rays of light issuing from his body.  
  
Blinded as I was, I could not look away. The Beast slowly descended to the castle floor, but he was no longer a Beast. And no longer was he the cold-hearted Prince that I had so spitefully toyed with all those years ago. He was simply a man now, a handsome young man whose exquisitely beautiful face lit up like the dawning of a summer morning when he laid his eyes upon Belle.  
  
Never have I known the joy that filled me when he took her in his arms. I looked away, knowing that they would kiss. The sun crested the hills beyond the castle, and I could feel the warm thrum of life begin to ebb through the tired, old stones.  
  
"Agathe?"  
  
Belle's voice drew my attention from the vibration of ancient magic pulsing all around me. She and her prince were watching me, both stunned. The young man took several steps towards me, complete disbelief on his handsome face.  
  
He wasn't a Beast. He was a person with a name and a fear and a love and a hope in his heart. And somehow I seemed to know his name, though I had never heard it spoken to me before.  
  
"Adam."  
  
He stopped, shocked at my use of his name. Belle glanced sidelong, likely never having heard his name before either.  
  
"I am sorry." I bowed my head. "Can you ever forgive a prideful old witch for a terrible mistake?"  
  
Belle's eyes widened. "You?" She whispered. "It was you, Agathe?"  
  
I nodded, the regret still stinging. "Yes, Belle. It was I. And I can only beg your forgiveness.”

  
"Forgive you?" Adam looked at me as if I truly were the madwoman all the people of Villeneuve believed me to be. He clasped my hands in his and looked at me with eyes bluer than a crystal stream. "Agathe? Is that your name? I don't need to forgive you, Agathe. Look at what you've given me." He looked at Belle with such naked affection and adoration that I felt an embarrassed flush creep into my cheeks.  
  
"Go to your people, my Prince," I said, needing something to say before I made a fool of myself. "And both of you...trust this." I took Belle's hand and placed it over Adam's. "This is pure love, Belle. Remember that. For only a love so pure could have made Adam sacrifice his love for your freedom. And only a love so pure could bring you back here when you dreaded him being in danger. Go now. Live. Love."  
  
And so they went, Adam's arm around Belle's waist, keeping her held close as if afraid of losing something so precious once more.  
  
Upon looking out the window of the chamber, I saw that the castle had indeed been reborn to its former glory. Lush, emerald gardens spread on the lands below, and not so much as a speck of dust tarnished the gleaming ramparts and spires.  
  
I could hear the sounds of happy chatter and a great many exclamations of joy from below. The servants had been restored to their human selves; the villagers had remembered their lost loved ones and their prince.  
  
For the first time in many a miserable year, I smiled. _Mother_ , I thought, _Great Goddess...thank you_.  
  
"Whatever in the world for, my daughter? You didn’t have to sacrifice your power to bring the Prince back to life."  
  
She was there, clothed in the white of a cloud and with a face as radiant as rainbow. She smiled at me. " The rose; the bell jar. It was all your doing. For you were a piece in this curse as well. You stood to learn just as Adam and Belle and all the others. Understanding your own vanity and pride was one thing; to sacrifice the power you hungered for to save the life of one whom you’d once despised? That is a form of love, my child."  
  
I bowed my head, and the Goddess kissed my brow. Power coursed through me, filling me like the memory of golden days. I opened my eyes, facing my Goddess in utter disbelief. She had returned my power to me, after all. But not longer did I desire to meddle in the lives of mortal men.  
  
"Thank you, Mother. But what comes now?"  
  
"Anything you wish.” The Goddess thought for a moment, looking out the window at the joyful reunion below. “I hear there's a young princess in a land bordering the world of faerie who has been cursed to sleep for a hundred years. You could always start there, if you’re so determined to break more curses. But first, there's to be a wedding, I expect, and I think it prudent that you remain, at least for the drink and the dance. Goodness knows you could use it."

I looked down from our vantage point, and found Belle and Adam among the crowd, embracing as the warm sun continued to nurture all that had once been frozen and lost.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I certainly could.”

**Author's Note:**

> I admit that I am obsessed with this movie, and I'm not ashamed of that. I saw Beauty and the Beast three times in five days, and twice in less than fourteen hours. There's something about it that just moved my soul every time I saw it. I was so intrigued by Agathe and wanted to answer a few questions I had about her for myself. I tried to go for a Mists of Avalon bent in the writing of this story; that book was another really important thing in my development, even though it is quite problematic.


End file.
